Cheney: White House 'Lied' on Benghazi, 'Worst Incident'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney charged on Monday that “several officials — up to and including President Obama” are complicit in a cover-up to hide the truth about last September’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans perished.

“I think it’s one of the worst incidents frankly that I can recall in my career,” Cheney said, appearing on Fox’s “Hannity” program.

He said that officials cannot allow Americans to know the truth about the attack because it would challenge the basis for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

“If they told the truth about Benghazi — that it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaida affiliated group — it would destroy the false image of competence that was the basis of his campaign for re-election,” Cheney insisted.

“Well they lied. They claimed it was because of a demonstration video so they wouldn’t have to admit that it was really all about their incompetence, that the State Department and the White House NSC ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the trap,” he asserted.

Moreover, the former vice president, who served under President George W. Bush during the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., charged that the Obama administration also “ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security. Indeed they reduced what was already there,” according to Cheney.

“And the administration either had no forces ready to respond to an attack, which should have been anticipated on the anniversary of 9/11 or they refused to deploy them when our people asked for help,” he charged.

Cheney said each U.S. theater commander around the world has a “contingency team, or an extremist team” available for their use in such situations.

“Where were they that night? Why hadn’t provisions been made to have forces within range?” including one such team stationed in Sicily, which would be about an hour away from Benghazi, he said.

“It makes no sense. I mean they totally ignored their responsibility, partly because they didn’t want to admit they had a problem,” the former vice president accused. “They were trying to perpetuate this fiction that there’s no terrorist threat because they got bin Laden and that’s a lie.”

With respect to revelations that the IRS has targeted conservative organizations for additional scrutiny, Cheney compared the scandal to Watergate.

“It’s one of the most egregious abuses of government power that I can think of, and I remember well back to the Watergate days when one of the counts against Richard Nixon was that his abuse of power by calling the IRS in to investigate — do audits on certain individuals that were his adversaries.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney charged on Monday that several officials up to and including President Obama are complicit in a cover-up to hide the truth about last September s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris...